With known power plant systems all functions of the individual components of the power plant system are under the overall control of a control system. In such cases it is necessary to operationally connect to the control system what are known as field devices, with which monitoring and safety functions for the individual components of the power plant are implemented in particular.
These types of field devices are for example the measuring devices of a transformer controller, a device protecting a transformer against overvoltage or maybe a motor protection against overvoltage.
To functionally connect such field devices to the control system tools or programming facilities are now available which are generally provided by the suppliers of the individual field devices and make it possible in a tabular user interface to plan the functional connection of the field device to the control system and the connections between the field devices into a project. The manner in which such tools are operated is however greatly dependent on the respective tool provided, on the type of field device and also on its supplier.
The functional linkage of field devices into such technical plants is thus comparatively costly and demands intensive training. Furthermore a connection created in such a way is always designed very individually and as a rule is not able to be linked into the actual control system of the power plant. Instead the field device planned into the project in this way represents a self-contained control and regulation module which is located functionally outside the control system and can accordingly not be fully monitored, evaluated and checked for errors by the latter.